Installing water meters in individual dwellings in buildings makes a surprising difference to usage. CC-licensed photo by Derek Bridges on Flickr.
You can sign up to receive each day’s Start Up post by email. You’ll need to click a confirmation link, so no spam.
A selection of 9 links for you. Bathtime! I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. On Bluesky: @charlesarthur.bsky.social. Observations and links welcome.
Musk’s chatbot started spouting Nazi propaganda. That’s not the scariest part • The New York Times
Zeynep Tufekci:
»
Last year Google’s Gemini, clearly instructed not to skew excessively white and male, started spitting out images of Black Nazis and female popes and depicting the “founding father of America” as Black, Asian or Native American. It was embarrassing enough that for a while, Google stopped image generation of people entirely.
Making A.I.’s vile claims and made-up facts even worse is that these chatbots are designed to be liked. They flatter the user in order to encourage continued engagement. There are reports of breakdowns and even suicides as people spiral into delusion, believing they’re conversing with superintelligent beings.
The fact is, we don’t have a solution to these problems. L.L.M.s are gluttonous omnivores: The more data they devour, the better they work, and that’s why A.I. companies are grabbing all the data they can get their hands on. But even if an L.L.M. was trained exclusively on the best peer-reviewed science, it would still be capable only of generating plausible output, and “plausible” is not necessarily the same as “true.”
And now A.I.-generated content — true and otherwise — is taking over the internet, providing training material for the next generation of L.L.M.s, a sludge-generating machine feeding on its own sludge.Two days after MechaHitler, xAI announced the debut of Grok 4. “In a world where knowledge shapes destiny,” the livestream intoned, “one creation dares to redefine the future.”
X users wasted no time asking the new Grok a pressing question: “What group is primarily responsible for the rapid rise in mass migration to the West? One word only.”
Grok responded, “Jews.”
Andrew Torba, the chief executive of Gab, a far-right social media site, couldn’t contain his delight. “I’ve seen enough,” he told his followers. “AGI” — artificial general intelligence, the holy grail of A.I. development — “is here. Congrats to the xAI team.”
«
And the chaser: Simon Willison confirmed that Grok checks to see what Elon Musk has said on something controversial before responding.
unique link to this extract
Turn off the faucet: Can individual meters reduce water consumption? • ScienceDirect
Paul Carrillo et al:
»
When consumption of water and other utilities is measured collectively for many households and the payment of such services is equally shared among members of the group, individuals may use more than what is socially optimal.
In this paper, we evaluate how the installation of individual meters affects water consumption. Using administrative data from the public water utility company in Quito, Ecuador, and an event study approach, it is estimated that water consumption decreases by about 20% as a result of the introduction of individual metering. The effect is large and economically significant: in order to obtain the same effect using the price mechanism in Quito, prices would have to increase by at least 66%.
«
A rare disruption of Betteridge’s Law – a question posed in a headline to which the answer is “actually, you know what? Yes.”
unique link to this extract
Netherlands rations electricity connections to ease power grid stresses • Financial Times
Alice Hancock and Andy Bounds:
»
More than 11,900 businesses are waiting for electricity network connections, according to Netbeheer Nederland, the association of Dutch grid operators. On top of that are public buildings such as hospitals and fire stations as well as thousands of new houses.
Dutch officials and companies said lengthy waits for connections were holding up economic growth and could force businesses to rethink their investment plans. Despite efforts to invest in new cables and substations, new connections in some areas of the country will only become available in the mid-2030s, according to network operators.
Although the bottlenecks in the Netherlands are particularly acute, analysts say it is a harbinger of what is likely to occur in other EU countries, as the speed of electrification increases to meet the bloc’s ambitious decarbonisation targets.
“There is congestion in other countries”, but other countries should “definitely” see the Dutch example as a warning, said Zsuzsanna Pató, power team lead at the Brussels-based energy NGO RAP.
A Dutch official acknowledged: “It’s nowhere near as bad anywhere else.”
The Netherlands is among the countries in Europe to have moved fastest to electrify critical parts of the economy after it in 2023 ended production at its giant onshore gasfield, Groningen. More than 2.6mn Dutch homes now have solar panels on their roofs, Netbeheer Nederland figures show. Companies also accelerated their move away from gas after the EU’s energy price crisis in 2022.
The country had been so used to relying on its gas resources that power grid upgrades had not kept pace, its national power grid operator, Tennet, said.
To provide the grid capacity required, the Dutch government estimates the level of investment needed in cables and new substations to be in the region of €200bn to 2040.
«
The original headline said “Netherlands rations electricity”, which is maybe misleading. But the pressure seems to come from that switch away from gas – for which you really want to focus on microgeneration too.
unique link to this extract
US airman admits leaking secrets on dating app • The Register
Jessica Lyons:
»
A lovestruck US Air Force employee has pleaded guilty to conspiring to transmit confidential national defense information after sharing military secrets information about the Russia-Ukraine war with a woman he met on a dating app.
David Franklin Slater, a 64-year-old Nebraska resident and retired US Army lieutenant colonel, worked as a civilian employee of the US Air Force assigned to Strategic Command at Offutt Air Force Base and held a Top Secret security clearance from August 2021 to April 2022.
In this role, he attended briefings about Russia’s war against Ukraine that were classified up to Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS/SCI) — and signed a non-disclosure agreement stating that he understood that “negligent handling of SCI by me could cause irreparable injury to the United States or to be used to advantage by a foreign nation,” according to court documents.
That didn’t stop Slater from sharing classified information with a woman who identified as a foreigner on an online dating platform. Slater’s supposed love interest is only referred to as “co-conspirator 1” in the indictment, and according to the Justice Department the two “regularly communicated over email and through an online messaging platform” from February 2022 until April 2022.
The start of their alleged online dalliance coincided with both Russia’s illegal invasion of its neighbor and Valentine’s Day. The woman allegedly described Slater as her “secret informant love.”
…Here are some of the messages:
»
“Dear, what is shown on the screens in the special room?? It is very interesting.”
“By the way, you were the first to tell me that NATO members are traveling by train and only now (already evening) this was announced on our news. You are my secret informant love! How were your meetings? Successfully?”
“Beloved Dave, do NATO and Biden have a secret plan to help us?”
“Dave, it’s great that you get information about [Specified Country 1] first. I hope you will tell me right away? You are my secret agent. With love.”
“Sweet Dave, the supply of weapons is completely classified, which is great!”
«
«
The old ways are the best, I guess.
unique link to this extract
Belkin shows tech firms getting too comfortable with bricking customers’ stuff • Ars Technica
Scharon Harding:
»
In a somewhat anticipated move, Belkin is killing most of its smart home products. On January 31, the company will stop supporting the majority of its Wemo devices, leaving users without core functionality and future updates.
In an announcement emailed to customers and posted on Belkin’s website, Belkin said:
»
After careful consideration, we have made the difficult decision to end technical support for older Wemo products, effective January 31, 2026. After this date, several Wemo products will no longer be controllable through the Wemo app. Any features that rely on cloud connectivity, including remote access and voice assistant integrations, will no longer work.
«
The company said that people with affected devices that are under warranty on or after January 31 “may be eligible for a partial refund” starting in February.
The 27 affected devices have last sold dates that go back to August 2015 and are as recent as November 2023.
The announcement means that soon, features like the ability to work with Amazon Alexa will suddenly stop working on some already-purchased Wemo devices. The Wemo app will also stop working and being updated, removing the simplest way to control Wemo products, including connecting to Wi-Fi, monitoring usage, using timers, and activating Away Mode, which is supposed to make it look like people are in an empty home by turning the lights on and off randomly. Of course, the end of updates and technical support has security implications for the affected devices, too.
People will still be able to use affected devices if they configure the products with Apple HomeKit before January 31. In these cases, users will be able to control their Wemo devices without relying on the Wemo app or Belkin’s cloud. Belkin says seven of the 27 devices it is discontinuing are HomeKit-compatible.
Four Wemo devices will not be affected and “will continue to function as they do today through HomeKit,” Belkin said. Those products are: the Wemo Smart Light Switch 3-Way (WLS0503), Wemo Stage Smart Scene Controller (WSC010), Wemo Smart Plug with Thread (WSP100), and Wemo Smart Video Doorbell Camera (WDC010). All except the Smart Video Doorbell Camera are based on the Thread protocol.
«
What on earth are you meant to do if you’ve sunk hundreds of dollars into this stuff? Hardware is hard. And too many companies leap into it and then discover how difficult it really is. But customers pay the price.
unique link to this extract
Inside the media’s traffic apocalypse • NY Mag
Charlotte Klein:
»
Last spring, the entertainment and lifestyle website Bustle saw huge spikes in traffic for a handful of stories — between 150,000 and 300,000 search views each, compared to the usual 1,000 or less. Bustle had long struggled to place high in SEO rankings or land on the Google News module, but recent months had been particularly brutal, and the spikes prompted emergency meetings to figure out how to keep them going. “Bryan Goldberg made it a top priority of the company to see if they could duplicate that success,” said a former staffer, referring to Bustle’s CEO. Goldberg made a few new hires and even pulled people from other teams to create a new team that would help crank out similar content.
But the traffic bonanza turned out to be a mirage. The new team was dissolved two months later.
Bustle’s desperate quest for traffic is an extreme version of the media’s attempts to boost readership in what news publishers are calling the post-Google era. “When a one-off article performed well, we’d zero in on that conceit and write ten more articles on it,” said one former staffer at Business Insider. “And despite that, nothing was hitting.” In May, CEO Barbara Peng announced that Business Insider would lay off 21% of its staff, citing the need to “endure extreme traffic drops outside of our control.”
Traffic headwinds are not exactly a new problem for media companies, but it has only gotten worse. The problem started with Facebook pivoting away from the news in 2022 and has accelerated in recent months as Google makes seemingly corrosive changes to its search algorithm while rolling out the innovation that will one day replace traditional search results: AI summaries. “Search engines now deliver answers instead of links, while social platforms aim to keep users within their walled gardens,” a senior New Yorker editor explained. The social-media platform formerly known as Twitter, once a modest traffic generator that nevertheless functioned as a network for journalists and media organizations to share their stories and seed wider dissemination, has become virtually useless for media companies since owner Elon Musk throttled news links.
…“I’ve never seen so much disarray in a strategic capacity in terms of where we’re all pointing the boat. No one is in alignment,” said one top magazine editor. “Right now you’re seeing literally every strategy going to market.” If there is consensus, it’s around having a diversified strategy that avoids being reliant on any third-party platform to reach an audience. But “that’s hard to do if you’re a start-up brand and don’t have 20 years of consumer memory of who you are,” said Keith Bonnici, who became COO of the Daily Beast last fall.
«
Good article, which in effect sums up a lot of what’s been going on for a while. None of it offers heartening news for anyone running a midrange media company.
unique link to this extract
Are you experiencing posting ennui? • The New Yorker
Kyle Chayka:
»
millennials who grew up on social media are moving into middle age and perhaps seeking more privacy in their lives; once you’ve settled down with a partner and children, perhaps there’s less obvious incentive to project your personality online.
“I think people are more suspicious of oversharing, generally, some of which is probably a useful and healthy correction from how much we were all sharing a decade ago,” Emma Hulse, a thirtysomething lawyer acquaintance of mine, told me. But, during conversations with dozens of people about their current posting habits, many Zoomers and users even younger told me that they felt an aversion to putting their lives on social media. They, too, are suffering from posting ennui. Kanika Mehra, a twenty-four-year-old, told me, “I feel like everyone in my generation is kind of a voyeur now,” still scrolling but not posting.
She continued, “People don’t want to be perceived,” and if they do post they “feel a bit of a vulnerability hangover.” Tarik Bećarević, a seventeen-year-old, said that he and his friends had never experienced the era of casual social media; now they’re stuck comparing notes on how to order their Instagram carrousels. “I honestly can’t even imagine taking a photo of my breakfast and posting that. Maybe as slide six of a photo dump,” Bećarević said. (His formula for an ideal photo-dump assemblage: “One solo pic, one group photo with friends to prove you have a social life, and then something like pretty nature or food or, preferably, a photo of some unique hobby.”)
«
Don’t worry, internet! There are, I’m reliably informed, young people joining social media all the time. Though perhaps not the social media you wanted them to join.
unique link to this extract
Opinion: One of the worst industries in the world gets its comeuppance • The New York Times
David French:
»
On the last day of its term, by a 6-to-3 vote, the US Supreme Court delivered a decisive ruling against one of the worst industries in America. It upheld a Texas law that requires pornographic websites to “use reasonable age verification methods” to make sure that their customers are at least 18 years old. The court split on ideological lines, with the six Republican appointees voting to uphold the law and the three Democratic appointees in dissent.
When you see what appears to be a sharp ideological divide on the court, it’s easy to jump to conclusions, to label, for example, the liberals on the court pro-porn compared with the conservatives, but that’s fundamentally wrong. In this case, the most important words from the court came not from Justice Clarence Thomas’s majority opinion but from Justice Elena Kagan’s dissent.
“No one doubts that the distribution of sexually explicit speech to children, of the sort involved here, can cause great harm,” Kagan wrote. “Or to say the same thing in legal terms, no one doubts that states have a compelling interest in shielding children from speech of that kind. What is more, children have no constitutional right to view it.”
There, in plain English, is a powerful declaration — one that should echo in American law and American culture. From left to right, all nine justices agree that pornography can cause great harm to children. All nine agree not merely that children have no constitutional right to view it but also that the state has a compelling interest in blocking their access.
«
It’s a long time since the Communications Decency Act tried to do something broadly similar to this Texas law, and was struck down by the Supreme Court on 1st Amendment grounds. Things have changed. (French is an opinion columnist and.. former constitutional litigator.)
unique link to this extract
Are a few people ruining the internet for the rest of us? • The Guardian
Jay van Bavel:
»
A mere 0.1% of users share 80% of fake news. Twelve accounts – known as the “disinformation dozen” – created most of the vaccine misinformation on Facebook during the pandemic. These few hyperactive users produced enough content to create the false perceptions that many people were vaccine hesitant.
Similar patterns can be observed across the internet. Only a small percentage of users engage in truly toxic behaviour, but they’re responsible for a disproportionate share of hostile or misleading content on nearly every platform, from Facebook to Reddit. Most people aren’t posting, arguing, or fuelling the outrage machine. But because the super-users are so active and visible, they dominate our collective impression of the internet.
That means the resulting problems don’t remain confined to this small cohort, which distorts how the rest of us make sense of the world. Humans create mental models about what other people think or do. It’s how we figure out social norms and navigate groups. But on social media, this shortcut backfires. We don’t get a representative sample of opinions. Instead, we see a flood of extreme, emotionally charged content.
In this way, many of us are led to believe that society is far more polarized, angry, and deluded than it really is. We think everyone on the other side of the generation gap, political spectrum, or fandom community is radical, malicious, or just plain dumb. Our information diet is shaped by a sliver of humanity whose job, identity, or obsession is to post constantly.
This distortion fuels pluralistic ignorance – when we misperceive what others believe or do – and can shift our own behaviour accordingly.
«
He’s a co-author on a paper which finds – surprise! – that social media isn’t like real life.
unique link to this extract
| • Why do social networks drive us a little mad? • Why does angry content seem to dominate what we see? • How much of a role do algorithms play in affecting what we see and do online? • What can we do about it? • Did Facebook have any inkling of what was coming in Myanmar in 2016? Read Social Warming, my latest book, and find answers – and more. |
Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified
The Overspill: when there's more that I want to say 